


𝐎𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐇𝐞’𝐬 𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

by Baguette_Me_Not



Series: TAU-VERSE [7]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence (Gravity Falls), So basically the complete opposite of my last fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24511798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baguette_Me_Not/pseuds/Baguette_Me_Not
Summary: The moment is infamous in history, the birth of the Dreambender, a fight of claws and flame in a demon v demon brawl. He remembers it differently.
Series: TAU-VERSE [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1468874
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	𝐎𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐇𝐞’𝐬 𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

𝙼𝚢 𝚆𝚘𝚛𝚜𝚝 

𝙴𝚗𝚎𝚖𝚢 𝙸𝚜 𝙼𝚢 

𝙼𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚢 

~ 𝚄𝚗𝚔𝚘𝚠𝚗

* * *

  
  


He never forgets.

The feeling of his body being torn limb from limb, muscles stretching and convulsing, tested to their very limits, before feeble connections give way and his skin sheds, layer by layer, cell by cell. He peels like an onion, flakey, tear ducts long since run dry from his seemingly endless bouts of harrowing screams. It’s a pain of unimaginable levels, so excruciating he’s pretty sure parts of him have gone numb. But where he _can_ feel it _,_ pain tears through him like butter, always managing to climb to a new height of agony, and then when he thinks it can’t get worse, a step above that. And it _hurts_. Oh how it hurts. Burns like a star gone supernova. A raw energy that extends beyond his very boundaries of a self.

Dipper’s twelve, only twelve, and his life is flashing before his eyes. He’s alight with his last burning embers, soul aflame, and fighting for every second of life, every lick of fire. His spark kindles and hisses, a stubborn thing, the will of a boy who just wants to _live_. To reach the age of thirteen, so close, so very close, but always just a stretch ahead.

It’s a doomed battle.

Where the triangle prods, slithers his slimy existence into him, a small segment of himself freezes, crumbles into a cold amounting mass of _something._ Every fleeting moment is a moment where something is lost, forgotten, ripped away from him because the universe is just this unfair. It won’t play the game by the rules, will make up new exceptions as it goes, reality warping anew around his frame as he falls to a fate he never even wanted.

Dipper screams for a loss of a feeling he can’t recall, feels his throat run raw until there’s no vocal chords to scream through. He’s self-destructive at this point, ripping through his mind to find the perpetrator and let him _squirm_.

Bill is a virus, an infection that reeks of chaos and death and violates his very essence. Dipper’s memories crumble at the triangle’s presence, leaving nothing but dust and ash, and the trickling of Bill’s oily ooze as a residue, an unwelcome tenant where Dipper resides. It’s unsettling, and wrong, wrong, _all wrong_. Wherever those tendrils touch, reach into his own infinity of a mindscape, vast and now oh so barren, they succeed in taking something he’s never even been aware of having. They take and they take, and he’s left with nothing but loss and pain as if it’s all he’s ever known. 

The pain, it’s all very clear, white hot as it tunnels through decaying marrow. Dipper’s a falling empire left to ruin. A bridge quaking on its foundations, creaking as the joints give way under rust. Nothing can ever cross safely again, repair now a far forgone option, because he knows it, there’s no coming back from whatever the heck he’s been plunged into. Any second and he will collapse, fall into the cavernous abyss below.

He would rather burn this bridge and push Cipher into the ruins. 

Fierce determination fuels his tunnel vision, the screams of _no, no, no_. This won’t be his end, and he absolutely refuses to abandon his post. He stands his ground, even as he breathes his last breath, even as he feels his lungs shatter. A power surges from within, a fierce struggle from a captain who refuses to abandon ship. His death is imminent, irreversible at this point, fate from the very second he struck that flimsy deal for the laptop. But here, perhaps he can soften the blow, he would rather stare death in its skeletal face than hand himself over to the enemy.

He refuses to bend to the will of that triangle, will not play his game and fall into his hands as putty ever again.

If Dipper dies, Bill goes with him.

The decision is made. The last chord is plucked, and the bridge collapses. Bill — or the measly thing he’s been reduced to, desperate enough to claw into a child’s mind — cackles until he doesn’t. His silence speaks louder than words.

He knows what Dipper’s done. Caught him in Bill’s blindspot, bested by a kid who’s determined to see this through to the very end.

And to the end they shall go. A body is decimated, a clearing all but incinerated, and a triangular demon thrown into a cycle he has never meant to enter.

For a moment, a mere second, Dipper is limitless. Just a being. An entity with a lack of self. He only knows he exists, _is something, means something,_ and it’s this feeling he clings to with every ounce of his nonexistence.

He knows not what he is, or who, but a familiar warmth pulls at him, strings of wool and comfort.

He wakes before he realises what waking is. Exists before he can wonder how. Sees before he realises he shouldn’t. Lives before it hits him he isn’t really living at all.

By all means, he should be dead.

Dipper sits on borrowed time, spins on clock hands of a clock that isn’t really his at all. An existence that belonged to a dying demon, _Bill's_ expiration date _, Bill’s_ sand timer. _Bill_ who’s unleashed more chaos than thought possible with that spur of the moment decision. 

The memory is a tarring mark on him. Ingrained so deeply in his mindscape it burns with a flame impossible to extinguish. A mocking thing, a reminder of his refusal to let his own flames die. 

He never forgets.

Not when Mabel’s there, coaxing him with a stream of ‘ _it’s okay_ ’s and ‘ _it’ll all be fine, see_ ’s, and any other such hollow words, each disguised as fuzzy warm sweaters, because they both know, deep down, it’s very much not okay. Phantom pain laces his fibres — he doesn’t know _what_ he even is anymore, he’s a _something_ because pain can’t come out of nowhere — twitching in fits and starts of muscle contractions. It’s reduced to an ache of a memory, nothing more than a dull tingling throb. But he pushes through, shoots a smile of empty despair. 

His eyes do all the telling. They’re not even brown anymore.

They’re both just kids, dealing with his death-not-death with hugs and tears. Promises that’ll snap and break beneath his touch, as his world comes clattering down around him at the speed of the supernatural becoming natural.

He never forgets.

Not when the truth emerges, a smack to the face even when he saw it coming. He’s a demon. Just like him. The thing he hated most.

It brings a whole other meaning to ‘you are your own worst enemy.’

Dipper abhors it.

Abhors the teething through bleeding gums, the wings that protrude from his back as two black stubs, the way his blood drips molten gold, loathes his claws that tear at flesh, cag on Mabel’s wool and shred her favoured clothing. But the pain is only mild in comparison to _that_ , the moment that changed it all. 

He never forgets.

Not when Mabel meets Henry, not when the triplets are born, not when he _wrecks_ his brother in law’s life with a wave of eldritch flame. The Woodsman arises, a being of the forest sculpted by his own spur of the moment decision. 

He’s doing the same. Exposing someone to a demonic power that creates something else entirely. Something not quite human. He weighs Henry down with antlers and served hands, a burden his brother in law should never have to carry.

He can never quite forgive himself for this. Much like the deal for Mabel’s soul, the decision saves a life, but it leaves scars rooted deep.

He never forgets.

Not when Mabel’s there, buried below mounds of dirt, little more than letters on a fast dissolving rock. His tears ebb away, too late to stop the ones that eat at the polished stone, acid on her grave. Grief consumes him in roaring waves, the what-ifs just as haunting as his presence, a strange ghostly boy clinging to a grave like his last anchor. Had Bill won, all those years back, that could have been him too. The Mystery Twins reunited by death.

Maybe, in the end, Bill wins anyway.

He never forgets.

Not with reincarnation after reincarnation. He watches over them, his ever growing family too until he becomes but a rumour. A protector of a family, even when his identity to them as a Pines is lost. He remembers why all this is happening, why he lives as he does, and it all links back to that moment.

He never forgets.

Not even when Bill’s soul emerges once more, a phoenix from the ashes, threatens to spill into the waking world and reclaim his domination plans centuries later. Nor at his second failure.

Dipper’s there, stuck with a cursed existence, a hatred that will never truly simmer down, fierce raging anger for the very demon who stuck him like this.

He never forgets. 

It’s a pain that lingers from a body and life long lost, the death of a child and the birth of a new demon. Of _Alcor_. The memory stands there, in the eye of his storm, coals on his fire, a fuel for his unadulterated rage. Of all the memories he has, this is the one that stays, the pain and _frustration_ hitting somewhere that all those happy memories can’t. It’s a second for the life of a demon, barely that. A speck of his immortal life.

But for him, the memory lasts an eternity. 

He can’t forget.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
